New global review in progress

Amazon’s New World is finally available in our world (which is technically the old world now, I guess?) And their servers are so full from day one that I haven’t been able to log in yet. However, I spent the past week circling a finished version of this colonial-era MMO, albeit without nearly the same number of players or queue times that many are currently experiencing. Note that since I am also responsible for a large chunk of IGN’s official wiki guide, most of that time was spent running around as a pre-made level 60 character and rummaging through various corrupted bee hives to see what I could get out. them so you don’t have to. But that has given me some time to understand the terrain and get a feel for how it all works, so here are my initial impressions of this long-awaited MMORPG.

The premise of New World is quite simple: you are a member of the crew of a pirate ship that has set out in search of a mystical island called Aeternum, which is rumored to be full of treasure. You land in the middle of a storm that has been infused with the island’s dark energy, called Corruption, and then you end up stranded on the shore with nothing but rags on your back and you must deal with the creatures and the rest of the humans on the island. Island. inhabitants (survivors of past shipwrecks). Basically, it’s like a Pirates of the Caribbean MMO with some high-fantasy elements included. This is perfectly fine as an original setting, and it’s great that Amazon Games seems to be getting expert inquiries to create the real-world cultures and influences that it displays. At least that’s what it says on the home screen. I have yet to dig into the main story missions though, which means it’s too early to say if it’s compelling enough to get me through what will undoubtedly be a long journey.

It’s worth noting up front that this all looks downright beautiful on Amazon’s Lumberyard engine (based on CryTek’s CryEngine), which does a great job of rendering volumetric lighting in real time and handling a host of characters and effects on the go. Same time. Not only are the draw distances quite impressive for an MMO, the trees and grass sway in the wind and cast precise-looking shadows at maximum settings. To its credit, I get strong Witcher 3 vibes from the overall New World look. Note that my machine is pretty much improved – I’m running an RTX 2080 Super on a Ryzen 3900X with a whopping 32GB of high-speed RAM.

As in other MMOs, you will start by creating your character, although New World has a relatively modest sum of different faces and hairstyles, then you will choose your name and voila. There is nothing deeper or more complex than that, and there are no additional races or classes to choose from at first. If you want to keep things simple, this is fine, but it certainly doesn’t offer the myriad of customization options that fans of Final Fantasy 14 or Black Desert Online might be familiar with.

As soon as you arrive on the island, you will be introduced to basic combat and missions. Don’t expect anything innovative in either case. When you talk to an NPC who has a quest for you, you’ll get a dialogue page and a preview of the quest reward, which in practice feels as deep as any interaction you might have in World of Warcraft or Destiny 2. But at least these conversations are decently interpreted.

Screenshots of New World Open Beta – One Night Live Gamescom 2021

I have not yet decided whether I believe the New World combat can hold out in the long run. It’s not that different from other hack n ‘slash RPGs, although it does often make you block, dodge, and break through your opponents’ defenses to be effective. The enemies, especially the dryads you’ll encounter later on, are also a bit more ferocious than standard enemies in other action MMOs – they’re smarter and don’t sit around while you’re attacking them. They will dodge and dodge your attacks, making the fights more dynamic than I’m used to. For our part, weapons feel good to swing – your position and timing have a huge impact on your combat effectiveness, though you’re stuck in an animation once you activate a skill. This may Make combat feel stiff if you’re not timing your attacks, dodges, and blocks at the right time.

However, the combat of the New World is not without its problems. For me, those started when a swarm of enemies ran over and launched their attacks in unison, making it difficult to get enough shots before they stunned me to death. I’m taking into consideration the fact that I have played completely alone so far and these encounters may be suitable for groups of players, but still these swarms are marked all over the map, even in the middle of the roads that I needed. travel to get to the next area. That doesn’t bode well for anyone planning to venture out alone.

The rest of my problems with New World combat stem directly from its lackluster character customization system. The classless approach is good enough – building your character is a matter of choosing what interests you and focusing on those specific abilities, just like in The Elder Scrolls Online. On paper, there is a decent group of weapon skills to choose from. But this stopped my progress when I realized that you cannot meaningfully combine and combine multiple skills at the same time. It makes sense that you can’t use ax skills with a rapier, but it’s disappointing that there aren’t any interstitial skills or spells outside of those lines. You can’t have a weapon in one hand and a bomb or fireball spell in the other. It’s also not that there are passive skill trees or armor skill trees to help you in all situations – if you’re developing a weapon skill, you’re playing within that exact skill tree with absolutely no interaction between that weapon and anything else. .

So it’s nice that you can quickly switch between two weapons in the middle of combat. For example, if you want to draw your enemies at close range with a bow and then take them out with a giant ax, you can theoretically make that happen … but you might not. want for.

This is because the customization of New World characters, and subsequently their combat, is held back by their limited attribute system. It forces you to use only a small and carefully selected group of weapon types per build. For example, the Focus attribute is completely useless to anyone other than a Life Staff wielder – putting your points into Focus is a huge opportunity cost that keeps you from putting points into Strength, an attribute that would be useful if you wanted to. use a War Hammer but, like Focus, it is completely useless for anyone with a bow or musket. But since it muddies your build by trying to split your points between the two, your options are remarkably limited if you want to be effective. It’s an irritating limitation of what looks like a flexible system that would allow all kinds of builds should be. Fortunately, you can respect all of your attribute building whenever you want, even in the middle of dungeons, for just a few coins.

Weapon skills and their associated skills are a completely separate topic. You still need to polish these individual skills, like the Sword and Shield skill or the Bow skill, to develop them, and even then, there are a small number of attacks that you can queue up on your hot bar. You’re stuck with only three special moves or spells on your hot bar at any given time (by comparison, The Elder Scrolls Online gives you six, and other MMOs are basically limitless). And the ones you can play with are tied directly to the weapon you’re holding, which means playing with a specific weapon type usually it feels exactly the same, with the only variation of two different skill lines that you can follow within each weapon skill tree.

But if you want to be the best tank, for example, you will always play with sword and shield and you will forever Dive into the same shield-centric skill line. My level 60 sword and shield wielder (again, a pre-made character I was using before launch) didn’t feel all that different from when I had created a first-level character.

The other major focus of New World is its player-based economy, which focuses heavily on its elements of creation and survival. If you don’t like survival and building elements from games like Minecraft or Don’t Starve, the New World’s absolute reliance on these things may turn you off very quickly. Virtually every item you need needs to be plucked from bushes or dug out of rocks, then refined or crafted at the city’s trading skill stations.

The catch is that there are no NPC providers in the New World. If you cannot find an item that is being sold by another player at the local trading post, which is specific to the settlement you are currently in, you will need to go out and create or find it yourself. This is great, if you like that kind of thing, because it gives you a tangible reason to develop your business skills. But again, New World economics isn’t a fun side-activity where you just dip your toes in between missions if you feel like it; It is your soul as you walk through this beautiful enchanted island.

Going back to the older MMOs, New World is also a much harder game to go through. There are currently no mounts of any kind, so crossing each zone is a difficult task, especially when encounters on the road can kill you and send you back to your original starting point if there are no other settlements nearby. Fast travel exists, but it is severely restricted by the scarce resource Azoth, which is difficult to acquire (but not so unreasonably difficult that fast travel is useless).

Regardless, as soon as the server queues allow, I’ll start playing New World with a new character from scratch. Be sure to stay and keep up to date with my adventure as it unfolds, and let us know what you think of the New World so far in the comments.